Champion of the Last Battle

by Robert Adams

  That was not a chance that Bili, feeling keenly the crushing weight of his undesired responsibilities, was willing to take. Several optional plans for the destruction of these oversize scaling ladders crowded the young thoheeks’ mind. Whether or not the guards and craftsmen were slain, the devices and raw materials must be tired, burned to ashes. But how best to accomplish this aim?

  He could have Lehnduhn the Kleesahk retrace his way back up the forward slope to the riflepit and there either slay or incapacitate Counter Tremain, the Ganik; then man the wall engines and the six larger ones positioned just inside the forward wall, load them with oil pots and pitchballs and loose at a high angle designed to drop them directly at the base of the slope, possibly accompanied by a few volleys of fire arrows for insurance that there would he fires and casualties, as well.

  But careful as these Skohshuns seemed to be in most other matters, he reflected, they were certain-sure to have made some provisions against this kind of attack on their cliffside site. Moreover, there was a slight overhang of rock down there, and a seepage pool of water beneath it, as he recalled — ill-smelling water, true, unpalatable to either man or beast, but wet enough to help retard fires, nonetheless, were there men still about who had the time and ability to so use it.

  Of course, he could send a number of the Kleesahks down by night — despite their height and size, they could move as silently as cats and, also like cats, they could see well in almost no light at all — to set the devices afire, but these Kleesahks, because of their size, strength and other talents, were too valuable a resource to encourage Bili to risk them on so chancy a venture. Now if all of them were capable of the mindcloudings that Pah-Elmuh, Oodehn and some few others of the strange hominids had mastered . . . but then, if warhorses had wings warfare would he fought significantly differently.

  Dismissing most of the officers and nobles still at table, the Thoheeks and Chief of Morguhn began to plan the sortie that he would lead out of the mountain fortress in a few hours. He would need men and women upon whom he knew he could depend in a pinch, yet he also could not, dared not, take all of these, and for various reasons there were certain individuals who had to be stricken from the list, automatically.

  The Freefighter officers, Captain Fil Tyluh and Acting Captain Frehd Brakit, could not be spared from the garrison under any but the most extreme circumstances, for they were the most experienced — indeed, the only truly and long experienced — siege engineers in the city. It was likewise out of the question to risk the loss of Pah-Elmuh and his Kleesahk surgical and medical assistants. And most of the members of Bili’s staff were too important to the ongoing defense to chance losing them in the course of a risky and highly dangerous, though very necessary, midnight sally forth against opposition of unknown quality and quantity.

  This would tend to strike Lieutenant Kahndoot, the very levelheaded and most competent of the Moon Maidens, Vlahkos Kamruhn of Skaht, Mikos of Eeahnopolis, Hornman Gy Ynstyn, Sir Yoo Folsom and old Vahrtahn Panosyuhn, the Ahrmehnee, and of course Rahksahnah, who was giving suck to their twin infants.

  “Hmmm,” he pondered. “This is going to take more than a mere couple of hours of thought, so it might be better to plan it all for tomorrow night. It didn’t appear that those Skohshuns had enough materials to finish those other two immediately, so we should have at least that little amount of time yet to go.”

  Shoving it all into a corner of his mind, he beamed a farcall to Kahndoot on the forward wall. “How many of our special troops has that tame Ganik of ours shot, so far, little sister?”

  Her return mindspeak came: “So many that we’re almost out of sawdust to stuff them afresh, Bili Those projectiles his thing throws burst with enough force to near tear the heads off these dummies, or to rip huge, well-nigh unrepairable holes in the fabric if they chance to strike farther down.

  “Moreover, one of the Maidens who was holding up a dummy, earlier this morning, had a tiny bit of what looks like lead driven completely through her left cheek and into her tongue. She was far from pleased by the happenstance, has been heard to say some rather uncomplimentary things about this plan of yours and about you, personally, big brother — mostly some speculations upon your ancestry, appearance, daily habits and preferences, general level of intelligence and suchlike.”

  Bili chuckled to himself and beamed. “And does my little sister agree with this aggrieved Maiden?”

  “In some of her observations, oversized brother,” Kahndoot replied, “but not in all, not in all. However, I would like to know how much longer we are going to play this game with that Ganik yonder.”

  “The remainder of this day and all of tomorrow, Kahndoot. After that, you have my permission to drop a few hundred-pound pebbles on him, quill him with arrows, pepper him with slingstones or whatever you wish. So send for some more sawdust and canvas, and tell those who support these dummies to either not stand so close or to borrow a helm with both visor and beaver. If there are none easily available, have a few fetched from the keep armory.”

  * * *

  “How many rounds, Counter?” growled Erica Arenstein in a rage. “Twenty-seven, you say? Dammit, you fool, that’s more than a quarter of our entire remaining stock of ammunition! And how many of those were clean misses? Hell, I knew I should have sent Horseface Charley back up, that or gone myself. At least he and I can hit what we aim at with consistency.”

  “Wal dang it, I hits ’em, too, Ehrkah!” Counter asserted heatedly. “I swan, I seen ever man jack of them Kuhmbluhnuhs go down evun heerd one the bugguhs scream oncet, kinda real garglylike scream, too.”

  Erica reflected on that. She had never before known Counter to lie to her, so he should not be starting now. But if only three shots from Horseface had kept the Kuhmbuhluhner garrison down off the walls and towers all of the day before yesterday, why should Counter Tremain have to shoot more than a scorn of them yesterday? Unless . . . unless they had begun to suspect that something was going on below that bluff.

  But when she broached her suspicions to Brigadier Maklarin, suggesting that the work be expedited, he just shook his snowy head. “Doctor, there is no way to do it faster. We own a limited number of artisans, for the one thing; for another, latticework of the strength and quantity we require is not quickly woven. This is Tuesday; the attack date chosen is this Friday. If they have not already found us out, I doubt that they will within the next two days.

  “No, my dear doctor, just give each of your riflemen one more tour of duty up there, then you all will be free to go south or wherever you wish with my blessing and that of all the Skohshun nation.”

  * * *

  “I cannot truly attest that he is improving in any way, Lord Champion, said Pah-Elmuh, “for still I cannot contact any portion of his mind, I only can report of observations, For one thing, he no longer seems to be losing flesh as he did for so long. For another, I am certain that his body must move itself at times when I am not there or not awake to see it done, for his muscles now seem to have regained a bit of tone, and twice now I have returned from nighttime errands or calls to find him in different positions on his couch and with his coverlets all disarrayed or even thrown from off him. This all bends me to the belief that King Byruhn may yet recover of his injuries and reign on the throne of his fathers.”

  The Kleesahk had been mindspeaking, but Bili’s grunted reply was spoken aloud. “The sooner the better, say I, Pah-Elmuh. It can’t be soon enough for me. I like not this extra work piled upon me, willy-nilly. New Kuhmbuhluhn. New Kuhmbuhluhnburk and New Kuhmbuhluhners should all be ruled over by one of their own, and I give you fair warning, when once the siege is broken and these damned Skohshuns hied back to their northern glen, Chief Bili of Morguhn is gone, too, whether or no King Byruhn be recovered. Let the royal council elect a New Kuhmbuhluhn nobleman to be regent . . . or the new king. I, my wife, my children, my stallion and all my condotta who wish to do so will be headed first for Sandee’s Cot, then east, toward our various homelands. I
have seen me enough mountains to last a lifetime long, or more.”

  Chapter XI

  Undaunted, in the strength of his vastly superior weapons, by the two reserve regiments — actually, in practice, training commands — of pikemen and the half-troop of light cavalry. Jay Corbett finally set up his headquarters in the spacious, stone-built house of Earl Devernee, bringing in a couple of heavily armed squads to garrison it and leaving Gumpner in charge of the camp and their hostages.

  In the absence of the hostage earl. Corbett quickly noted, Lady Pamela Grey — Earl Devernee’s half sister — seemed to rule over the glen rather competently, in his stead. He was impressed with his less-than-willing hostess, mightily impressed. He found her to be intelligent, quick-witted and, when she wished to be so, charming. She also was very strong-willed, with a keen and deeply embedded sense of justice and morality — of what was right and what wrong, by her standards.

  Her son, who served as Corbett’s guide and companion as the officer searched the nooks and crannies of the glen for any sign of Erica and her Ganiks, shared her strict senses of justice and honor, of responsibility and duty. The grave, one-legged, fourteen-year-old combat veteran was, in Corbett’s mind, a thoroughly admirable young man, a credit to his mother, his dead father and his people; but he could not but wonder if Ensign Thomas Grey would ever come to rue and regret so early a loss of childhood, so sudden a transition into the responsibilities of maturity. He sincerely hoped not.

  A week of searching and of questioning Skohshuns of all stations and ages, civilian and military, of both sexes, at last convinced him that Earl Devernee had indeed spoken the full truth at their initial meeting — Dr. Erica Arenstein and the Ganiks she now led had departed the glen long weeks ago, bound for the field army. Now he must march fast in the wake of the wagon train that had borne them southeast, but he wanted to arrive unannounced, without the large and powerful Skohshun army being apprised that he was bound toward them.

  This matter could have been simply enough handled by the shooting of every horse in the glen, but to do so he and his two squads would have been obliged to penetrate some of the narrow, twisting defiles quite deeply and would likely have had to fight their way back, killing or wounding a sizable number of the outraged Skohshuns in the process, so he chose an easier method of achieving the same end or so he then thought.

  During the night before the departure of him and his two squads from the house of which Lady Pamela Grey was the temporary chatelaine, he tried several times to mentally frame the words he would say to her in parting, telling her of just what he must do to protect his command, to provide security on the coming march; but each new speech rang lamer than the one preceding it in his mind, and when at last the morning came, he simply thanked her for her courtesies and bade her farewell.

  When he released Earl Devernee, however, he laid it flat on the line to the nobleman. “Mr. Devernee, I’m now going after Dr. Arenstein and her party.”

  “Do you know the road, General Corbett?” the earl blandly asked, “If not, I can supply you with a few guides.”

  “Thank you, but no,” Corbett grinned in reply. “You have already supplied me with a fine map from the office in your house. My compliments to your military cartographers — they do first-class work with primitive equipment.”

  The earl nodded once. “Thank you, sir. You are, of course, more than welcome to the map. I know well that you could easily have taken much more, had you so desired, slaying anyone, everyone who might have opposed you.”

  “I’m a soldier, Mr. Devernee, not a bandit,” said Jay Corbett. “And while killing is often my job, it seldom if ever has been my pleasure. But I have my command to protect, too, Mr. Devernee, and so I am serving you fair warning that any messengers you try to send on ahead of me to give your Brigadier Maklarin word of my approach will be most harshly, most fatally, dealt with — not of my desire, for I admire you and your people, but of my necessity.

  “Further, because I know that you will try to send gallopers, and my warning here be damned, I’m going to make it as difficult as I can for you and for them. I have seen every inch of the glen and the steeps that surround it, and while it might be just barely possible for a skilled rider on a very surefooted mount to get over those steeps in a very few places, it would take a drooling lunatic to try it to begin, and when he reached the outside, he would have lost a goodly bit of time, for I would be well on my way.”

  “You mean to leave a force, then, to hold this entryway to Skohshun Glen, general?” inquired the earl, with a worried frown.

  “No, Mr. Devernee,” replied Corbett. “I have already made my preparations and I will shortly blow down the cliffs on either side of that narrowest section of the entryway. By the time you and your people have cleared it sufficiently to ride a horse through it, my business with your field army should be over and done and I should be marching back south with Dr. Arenstein.

  “I reiterate, sir, I greatly admire you and your people and I wish you and them success in all endeavors — save those that bear upon me and mine — so please do not consider the thing I now must do as a hostile act, for it is not; rather, it is a military expedient, a necessary act of bloodless destruction. Do you understand me, Mr. Devernee?”

  The earl sighed and smiled wanly. “Yes, General Cothett, I do; I truly do understand you, more, I think, than you understand me. I have learned much of you, you know, in conversations with your officers, notably Colonel Gumpner. I deeply regret that we two are not, cannot be, allies, for I think we were cut of the selfsame bolt of the cloth of honor.

  “You have done and will do that which you feel you must for the welfare of those you rule. I have done and will assuredly do exactly the same, as God wills me the strength to do it. I am not and have never been a soldier, a fighter, and precious few of my forefathers have been, for we are the civil rulers of the Skohshun people. But I have lived with and among soldiers for all my days. I have seen the good and the bad, the brave and the cowardly, the competent and the incompetent, the careful plodders and the glory-hunters, and I have learned — I pray God — to winnow the grain from the chaff.

  “I judge you to be a superlative officer, general, an officer who demands much from his subordinates, but even more from himself. You probably get everything you ask from your officers and other ranks, too, general, for one and all they love and worship you to a degree that is almost sacrilegious. They will allow you to drive them cruel hard, but only because they know that you drive yourself even harder, that you return their love and that their individual and collective welfare is paramount in your mind and your decisions.

  “My late brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Grey — God keep his gallant soul — was a man much like you, and his loss was a bitter cruel one to endure. But at least poor Ed left a fine son who has already, at the age of only a bit over fourteen years, brought added luster to his distinguished name and house.”

  “Yes,” Corbett nodded, “Ensign Grey served as my guide in my search of the glen. He is indeed a fine young man, and any parent would be proud of him.

  “But, now, Mr. Devernee, we must be on our way, shortly. You and your retainers please exercise due haste in getting back, well back, into the glen. Get those soldiers off the lines of cliffs, for I well know just how tricky rockslides can be, and the slide that my devices precipitate may well result in sympathetic slides all along those cliffs, Also, you’d be well advised to keep your people out of that entryway for at least a day, for rocks may continue to fall at odd intervals for some time.”

  * * *

  As young Thoheeks Bili of Morguhn sat planning out his sally against the Skohshuns, great, dark-gray banks of rainclouds were blowing down from the north. There were severe downpours three or four times that night and misty sprinkles in between, and the beefed-up patrols on the city streets and the members of the enlarged wall watches all cursed the chilly, unpleasant weather and scoffed at the reasons for their being forced to bide out in it.

&nbs
p; But, for whatever reason or reasons, the monster wolf was not seen, nor did it kill or feed within the burk of New Kuhmbuhluhn that night. Bright and early on the next morning, armed, armored search parties of men and Kleesahks led by Bili, Captain Fil Tyluh, Acting Captain Frehd Brakit, Vlahkos Kamruhn, the Vahrohneeskos Gneedos Kamruhn Sir Yoo Folsom, Lieutenants Roopuht and Kahndoot — both gritty-eyed from lack of sleep but keen still to help put paid to the account of the bestial trespasser — Mikos of Eeahnopolis, Tsimbos of Ahnpolis and several Kuhmbuhluhn noble officers all fanned out through the multileveled galleries and chambers and winding corridors of the honeycombed mountain behind the palace and keep, lighting the way with torches and lamps and bull’s-eye lanthorns.

  But they found no wolf, nor any sign of one, old or recent. They found a few stoats, semidomesticated ones whose ancestors had been deliberately released there to retard the proliferation of rats, mice and similar vermin among the stores in the magazines. They chanced across a long-forgotten chamber packed with pipes and casks and kegs of very old and very potent wines. They found other antique artifacts, some of them as old as the kingdom, or so the Kleesahks attested. But they could not discover even so much as the bare scent of their quarry, so with the sally scheduled for the night of this day, Bili called off the search and the various parties made their respective ways back to the palace.

  It was not until on their return they reached the spot where keep abutted palace that Whitetip mindspoke Bili. “The creature was here, cat brother, perhaps a day ago. He left his scent there, on the angle of the wall, as any dog or jackal or wolf would do.”